Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Introducing Plover Dojo!

Two exciting Plover-related blog posts in one day! Partly because I've been falling down on the job a bit and not posting news items as quickly as I should, but partly because the Plover tutorial scene is kind of exploding! We've got QwertySteno and Cargo Crisis, StenoTutor, the new steno textbook I've been working on with the tech writer I mentioned a while back (coming very soon!), and now an amazing new comprehensive resource for beginning stenographers: Plover Dojo!

JR and Jay, the creators of Plover Dojo, go way, way back with The Plover Project. They made the Plover Demo, coded the first iteration of the Plover Wiki, and more recently devised the Plover Community Survey. What I'm saying is: These guys got cred. And now there's Plover Dojo, an absolutely gorgeous implementation of interactive design. It's still not completely finished, but there's already a wealth of tutorials, drills, and an ingenious steno keyboard filter that lets you practice lists of common words made up of whichever key combinations you specify. There's more to come in the future, so feel free to drop them a line about any bugs or feature requests at the Google Group, or email ploverdojo@gmail.com.

If you've been wary about trying to teach yourself steno due to the intimidating initial learning curve, please give Plover Dojo a try. It's fantastic.